Improvement of Health Professional Practices

Continuing Professional Development (CPD)

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is a continuous improvement measure for the safety and quality of health care. It combines continuous training and analysis of professional practices and targets all health professionals. It is an individual obligation that is part of an ongoing process to improve healthcare quality.

HAS is responsable for providing professionals with tools to carry out their CPD. To this end, HAS works with health professionals to prepare and establish a list of methods and procedures for CPD.

OGDPC [Continuing Professional Development Management Organisation], the national CPD organisation, is in charge of organisational and implementation aspects.

Patient Safety

Closely linked to the notion of quality in care, the goal of patient safety is to minimize the incidence and impact of adverse events and maximize their recovery.

An "adverse event" is an unexpected event that disrupts or delays the process of care, or directly affects a patient's health. These events may be more or less serious (risk event or serious adverse event [SAE]) and more or less preventable.

HAS has been involved in this field since its creation through the development of multiple multi-year action plans that promote a progressive increase of stakeholder's knowledge in the field of safety.

To learn more about Patient Safety

Physician Practice Accreditation Programme

In 16 "high-risk" medical and surgical specialities, HAS is developing a measure to improve the safety and quality of health care and professional practices through the performance of root cause analysis to identify factors that underlie the occurrence of adverse event. The Physician Practice Accreditation is a voluntary measure in the management of medical risks at healthcare organisations.

About 7,000 physicians are engaged in this continuous improvement program with regards to their practice, resulting in 112,000 adverse events analysed and recorded in a dedicated database.

To learn more about Physician Practice Accreditation Programme